


Ever Vigilant for the Day

by Noblehunter



Category: Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Better Living through Doctor Who quotes, M/M, On Death and Life in comic books, Red Hood needs better coping methods, Temporary Character Death, unbetaed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 00:47:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21383320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noblehunter/pseuds/Noblehunter
Summary: Red Hood is living proof that death is not the end. He’ll wait for Tim as long as he has to.
Relationships: Tim Drake/Jason Todd
Comments: 7
Kudos: 106





	Ever Vigilant for the Day

**Author's Note:**

> Wherein I shamelessly plunder one of my favourite Doctor Who quotes for gratuitous feels. The whole quote is in the end note.

Everybody knows that every body dies and no one knows it like Red Hood. He’d clawed his way out of his own grave after all. Death waits for everyone, failed Robins and Red Robins alike. Still, he holds out hope for that one day in a million days.

He makes a point of remembering this every night when the sun goes down. He stands at the grave and waits. It’s next to his own. That concession had almost pushed him back into open conflict with his family. They hadn’t wanted their griefs so closely intertwined. But what if he’d come back because of where he’d been buried. So the graves lay side by side, one manicured and immaculate, the other overgrown and neglected.

It’s not until the sun has set completely that Red Hood turns away. Dusk is a time of transition. Strange things happen at dusk and maybe that included miracles. So Red Hood stood vigil while the day became night. After, he returns to his war on the crime and scum that infects his city. He makes sure everyone knows that it is only the grace of the fallen that stays his hand.

As dawn approaches he returns to the grave. Each new day may be the day that he hopes for. He will not leave anyone to dig themselves out of six feet of dirt to find a world that has moved on. Morning finds him a stone-still figure, hoping with each breath that the earth beneath him will be disturbed by too pale hands.

It’s not just at dawn and dusk that Red Hood holds vigils. The anniversary of That Day sees Red Hood at the grave for a full twenty four hours. Others join him periodically but he discourages conversation. He does not stand at the grave for grief or remembrance but for hope. Let them take their grief elsewhere.

Others join him in hope on the anniversary of his own return to life. That’s when it’s easier to believe in miracles and inexplicable joy. They share theories of why Red Hood came back or how the other dead could be brought to life. It’s the closest he feels to what is left of his family.

His longest vigil is from when the sun starts to set on All Hallows’ Eve to when the sun sets on All Souls Day. Childhood superstition or lapsed religious feeling or just stubborn hope, he feels like that his day is most likely to be then. Family spells him off for necessary breaks but they don’t chat. The hope weighs too heavy on them for speculation or wish casting. Every year the sun sets on All Souls Day, he leaves a little more of himself next to that grave.

It happens on a warm Sunday in June, when the city hums a little bit faster and tries to remember what it was like to look forward to summer holidays. What it was like to look forward to anything at all. Red Hood slept. The sun was up and day reigned supreme. It was not a liminal time nor an hour when miracles occurred. It was still not a time under the midnight sun when strange things would freeze the blood of southern men. Only a warm afternoon where Red Hood slept badly in a too big bed. It was still one day of out a million days.

There was a knock at the door. Red Hood wakes and is armed before the sound fades. He stalks to the door, wary like a beaten dog. He stands still, out of line with the door. He waits. There is another knock. It feels familiar. With his heart in his throat, Red Hood opens the door, gun held low at his side.

“Jason,” Tim says hoarsely. His hair was damp and plastered to his head. His clothes were too big and cheekbones too sharp. “Jason,” he repeats. “I came back.”

Two graves lie side by side both now empty. The flowers have wilted and the tombstones cracked. The ground has settled and grass reclaimed the earth disturbed by the passage of impossible bodies. No one stands over them in hope or grief or remembrance. Yet they remain. They embody silent promises: that two who are together in life will be together in death; that everybody needs a grave eventually; and that some days, one day day out of a million days, everybody lives.

**Author's Note:**

> “Everybody knows that everybody dies and nobody knows it like the Doctor, but I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever, for one moment, accepts it.“
> 
> “Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call, everybody lives.”
> 
> River Song, “The Forest of the Dead,” written by Steven Moffat


End file.
